Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
There is definitely some sort of connection. At the very least productivity is a ceiling on wages since a business wouldn't last long if it paid out more in wages than those wages were producing.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
There is definitely some sort of connection. At the very least productivity is a ceiling on wages since a business wouldn't last long if it paid out more in wages than those wages were producing.
Sometimes there's definitely a connection, sometimes there isn't at all is my point. Specifically in response to the idea that wages indicate how productive work is.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
No I'm actually not suggesting implementing it in this way. I am creating an extreme example to try to provoke some understanding of what the possible downsides are of a UBI, and why they have to be taken seriously - something none of its proponents are doing. And I did not specify how taxes would be distributed across incomes at all.
The second half of your post is a collection of slogans. Are you actually interested in working out some understanding of the economics of the UBI in this thread, or is it just a liberal totem that must be defended from all comers?
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
You're basically taking an extreme quantitative neoliberal position on economics, that the only way to determine the worth of anything is through its monetary value and that the only way to motivate people to do things is through providing monetary value, and this motivation is dominant, has no margins, and is granular. You are modelling human behaviour as per the traditional capitalist model of the rational actor, and then you're arguing that according to your model, UBI won't work, but the conclusion is essentially baked into your initial premises, and honestly, there's just no conversation to be had with you on UBI if you're going to be like that
Doubly so if you're intent on recasting it as "having everyone do things that they find fulfilling," which is not, as far as I understand it, the objective of UBI.
Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
You're basically taking an extreme quantitative neoliberal position on economics, that the only way to determine the worth of anything is through its monetary value and that the only way to motivate people to do things is through providing monetary value, and this motivation is dominant, has no margins, and is granular. You are modelling human behaviour as per the traditional capitalist model of the rational actor, and then you're arguing that according to your model, UBI won't work, but the conclusion is essentially baked into your initial premises, and honestly, there's just no conversation to be had with you on UBI if you're going to be like that
Doubly so if you're intent on recasting it as "having everyone do things that they find fulfilling," which is not, as far as I understand it, the objective of UBI.
1) Yes, I am taking the position that the only way to determine the economic worth of anything being traded, whether goods or labor, is what someone will pay you for it. This is not "an extreme quantitative neoliberal position." It is the default position of economics! How much is your house worth? What you can get people to pay for it. Does it have worth to you besides that? Sure, childhood memories, a familiar neighborhood, a unique door knob that you happen to love. Were you imagining a version of economics that somehow takes these things into account in addition to the selling price? Perhaps in this model, the economic value of giving birth is infinite, for surely there is no greater gift than a human life, etc. As warming as that thought is, it's not very useful for discussing tax policy or figuring out the implications of a UBI.
2) I am not suggesting that moneyr is the only means of motivating people. (Did you read anything from the discussion on the last page?) I'm suggesting that humans left to themselves will not distribute their labor efficiently and the results are catastrophic in a modern economy. You disagree? Found a commune and see how it goes, on a small scale, with people who know each other. Then imagine what it will be like with the nation as a whole. How do we avoid this? We can either organize work gangs, or we can allocate more resources to people who do more valuable things with their time.
3) Perhaps you missed the part in Heffling's post where he talked about how UBI would free people to pursue self-actualization. Or, like, the fifty other times in this thread people have mentioned that. The reality is that every time I respond to someone's claim about what the UBI accomplishes, someone else pops up to insist that no, that's not the motivation for it all! How dare you construct such a straw man! There needs to be a term for this. Maybe rotating goal posts?
Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
No I'm actually not suggesting implementing it in this way. I am creating an extreme example to try to provoke some understanding of what the possible downsides are of a UBI, and why they have to be taken seriously - something none of its proponents are doing. And I did not specify how taxes would be distributed across incomes at all.
The second half of your post is a collection of slogans. Are you actually interested in working out some understanding of the economics of the UBI in this thread, or is it just a liberal totem that must be defended from all comers?
But those downsides don't exist unless it's implemented that way. With drastically higher taxation across the board decades ago the American economy was still fine. So no, higher taxes aren't going to cause a downward spiral of unemployment.
And pointing out that wages =/= the value of the work isn't a liberal totem. You're the one who claimed how much the market pays is how much the work is worth but that is literally untrue as demonstrated by the myriad of factors that influence what the market will pay for work ie minorities getting payed significantly less for identical work.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
No I'm actually not suggesting implementing it in this way. I am creating an extreme example to try to provoke some understanding of what the possible downsides are of a UBI, and why they have to be taken seriously - something none of its proponents are doing. And I did not specify how taxes would be distributed across incomes at all.
The second half of your post is a collection of slogans. Are you actually interested in working out some understanding of the economics of the UBI in this thread, or is it just a liberal totem that must be defended from all comers?
But those downsides don't exist unless it's implemented that way. With drastically higher taxation across the board decades ago the American economy was still fine. So no, higher taxes aren't going to cause a downward spiral of unemployment.
And pointing out that wages =/= the value of the work isn't a liberal totem. You're the one who claimed how much the market pays is how much the work is worth but that is literally untrue as demonstrated by the myriad of factors that influence what the market will pay for work ie minorities getting payed significantly less for identical work.
Taxes in the US were once higher and we were fine. Therefore there is no upper limit to how much we can tax income.
Is that your position? If not, do you see why talking about how we can raise taxes by some amount is not an answer to the fact that there is an upper limit to how much you can tax before destroying the economy? Do you see why we need to reason quantitatively, not qualitatively? And on that note, both total tax collection and total income tax collection have hardly changed at all in fifty years. That would be the difference between nominal high marginal tax rates and what you actually collect in revenue.
Re: wages, I started to write a response, and realized I was writing exactly what I wrote in my last two replies to you. 1) There is no better means of determining the value of work, 2) It makes no difference to the point I actually made in that post about wages motivating more valuable work. But that's not what I was referring to in my post as a liberal totem. As is obvious if you read it. Which makes me think that the answer to my question from that post is "no." So I'm gonna disengage.
Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.
So basically spend more money on people in need? Well, instead of forcing people to buy certain things with programs like food stamps, why not just cut them a check and let them best decide how to get back on their feet? Capitalism is the most efficient way of distributing good after all. Not perfect. Not even close. But way better than a government mandate to buy certain things.
And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.
Taxes used to be around 90% and loads of people were working so I don't find this to be much of a concern at all.
How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays.
This is blatantly untrue. We do not know how productive work is by how much the market pays for it. We only know how much money it makes.
You are confusing "makes money" with "value" which vary all over the place in their relation to each other.
Taxes did not used to be 90%. The top tax bracket used to be 90%. It brought in almost nothing, because of course hardly anyone bothered getting a salary high enough to warrant it after deductions. Taxes this high are called "confiscatory," and their purpose is not to collect revenue, because they don't.
Wage is the worst means of determining the economic value of work except for all the others that have been tried. But if you feel you have better methods of figuring that out, you can always apply to your local politburo. The market is often irrational - but it's famously tough to beat in the long run.
And yet despite that high tax rate America's economy soared, the wealth gap was far lower, and even the lower class could easily afford to buy a house.
Your second part isn't the point. You claimed work is productive because it makes money. That is a falsehood. Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
No I'm actually not suggesting implementing it in this way. I am creating an extreme example to try to provoke some understanding of what the possible downsides are of a UBI, and why they have to be taken seriously - something none of its proponents are doing. And I did not specify how taxes would be distributed across incomes at all.
The second half of your post is a collection of slogans. Are you actually interested in working out some understanding of the economics of the UBI in this thread, or is it just a liberal totem that must be defended from all comers?
But those downsides don't exist unless it's implemented that way. With drastically higher taxation across the board decades ago the American economy was still fine. So no, higher taxes aren't going to cause a downward spiral of unemployment.
And pointing out that wages =/= the value of the work isn't a liberal totem. You're the one who claimed how much the market pays is how much the work is worth but that is literally untrue as demonstrated by the myriad of factors that influence what the market will pay for work ie minorities getting payed significantly less for identical work.
Taxes in the US were once higher and we were fine. Therefore there is no upper limit to how much we can tax income.
Is that your position? If not, do you see why talking about how we can raise taxes by some amount is not an answer to the fact that there is an upper limit to how much you can tax before destroying the economy? Do you see why we need to reason quantitatively, not qualitatively? And on that note, both total tax collection and total income tax collection have hardly changed at all in fifty years. That would be the difference between nominal high marginal tax rates and what you actually collect in revenue.
Re: wages, I started to write a response, and realized I was writing exactly what I wrote in my last two replies to you. 1) There is no better means of determining the value of work, 2) It makes no difference to the point I actually made in that post about wages motivating more valuable work. But that's not what I was referring to in my post as a liberal totem. As is obvious if you read it. Which makes me think that the answer to my question from that post is "no." So I'm gonna disengage.
It's clear that taxation needs no upper limit not my position. Kindly stop taking things to ridiculous extremes to try and make your point. And there are plenty of better means in determining the value of work. One would be providing a guaranteed income so that people who do it aren't faced with the threat of homelessness and starvation. We already do this to a degree. People don't get paid a minimum wage because that's what the market has deemed is acceptable. They get paid that because the government decided all work has a minimal value. Which is a shit ton better than the market doing so on its own.
Edit: Seriously though, a lot of your opposition seems to be in grossly inaccurate assumptions about people's positions. No one is saying give everyone enough money to live in absurd luxury forever or to raise taxes to 100% on everyone. Those positions would indeed be foolish which is why no one has said them.
3) Perhaps you missed the part in Heffling's post where he talked about how UBI would free people to pursue self-actualization. Or, like, the fifty other times in this thread people have mentioned that. The reality is that every time I respond to someone's claim about what the UBI accomplishes, someone else pops up to insist that no, that's not the motivation for it all! How dare you construct such a straw man! There needs to be a term for this. Maybe rotating goal posts?
That UBI does a thing does not mean that it's the objective. It's also not "all people". I mean... just Google "basic income". If you think @Heffling is bringing it up when it shouldn't be brought up, then call him out on it, instead of tilting at his windmills (though it does not seem to me that it's Heffling who first used the word, at least not according to the forum's search function). If anybody's saying that the objective of UBI is freaking eudaimonia, then they don't understand UBI (see @The Big Levinsky 's post).
1) Yes, I am taking the position that the only way to determine the economic worth of anything being traded, whether goods or labor, is what someone will pay you for it. This is not "an extreme quantitative neoliberal position." It is the default position of economics! How much is your house worth? What you can get people to pay for it. Does it have worth to you besides that? Sure, childhood memories, a familiar neighborhood, a unique door knob that you happen to love. Were you imagining a version of economics that somehow takes these things into account in addition to the selling price? Perhaps in this model, the economic value of giving birth is infinite, for surely there is no greater gift than a human life, etc. As warming as that thought is, it's not very useful for discussing tax policy or figuring out the implications of a UBI.
No, because more careful economic studies clearly acknowledge that there is unpaid labour that has value to the economy, like having children and raising them. We also know that the capitalist system is not inherently efficient, that there is significant potential that is wasted due to its inefficiencies. The UBI experiment done in Manitoba in the 70s found that new mothers and teenagers were the two groups that worked significantly less, instead diverting to raising their children and taking on more education. That you ignore these economic benefits is, quite frankly, a stake in the heart of your economic analysis, because you've intentionally limited yourself to a shoddy model that is incapable of measuring the benefits of UBI.
It is precisely an extreme quantitative neoliberal position to attempt to shrink sociology into quantitative game theory. It's fallacious and foolish, and again, if that's the world you're living in, then there remains no talking to you about UBI, because for you, there is no value in children and no value in providing opportunity to brilliant but poor teenagers.
Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.
So basically spend more money on people in need? Well, instead of forcing people to buy certain things with programs like food stamps, why not just cut them a check and let them best decide how to get back on their feet? Capitalism is the most efficient way of distributing good after all. Not perfect. Not even close. But way better than a government mandate to buy certain things.
Cutting a check is how we used to do it. I see no problem with going back to that. But that's not a UBI, unless you define the term such that the US and most welfare states already have or had one. In which case I have no idea what this thread is about.
Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.
Yes, by having UBI.
Edit: Also, one of the advantages of UBI that you've ignored is that it's supposed to actually cost less than traditional welfare systems, by not providing disincentives to work, by reducing administrative overhead, and being better at prevention rather than response (particularly in cost areas like policing, health care, justice system, shelter, etc,). Whether it actually does or not isn't a conclusion I can draw based on what I know, but I've certainly read that it has in many of its various experimental implementations.
hippofant on
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Nbspshe laughs, like Godher mind's like a diamondRegistered Userregular
Though I'm perfectly fine raising taxes across the board for the top 20% or so.
Then we're more similar than you think.
If we must raise taxes, then I'm actually fine with raising taxes on everyone equally. None of this "tax hike for the top 1%" or only the top 20% bullshit.
If the rich can afford to pay an extra few million or several hundred thousands more on taxes, then it's not unreasonable to ask everyone else to pay a couple extra thousand or hundreds on their taxes as well.
The revenue we get will far surpass a tax hike on just the top bracket.
Though I'm perfectly fine raising taxes across the board for the top 20% or so.
Then we're more similar than you think.
If we must raise taxes, then I'm actually fine with raising taxes on everyone equally. None of this "tax hike for the top 1%" or only the top 20% bullshit.
If the rich can afford to pay an extra few million or several hundred thousands more on taxes, then it's not unreasonable to ask everyone else to pay a couple extra thousand or hundreds on their taxes as well.
The revenue we get will far surpass a tax hike on just the top bracket.
Raising taxes equally on everyone equally, unless you're responding to Moon-Quid as opposed to actual Quid, is not similar to what he's said. :-p
The notion of "fairness" is ridiculous given the current wage gap and real wage stagnation for the working class. Things are currently EXTREMELY unfair and everyone knows this. Some just choose not to admit it.
Though I'm perfectly fine raising taxes across the board for the top 20% or so.
Then we're more similar than you think.
If we must raise taxes, then I'm actually fine with raising taxes on everyone equally. None of this "tax hike for the top 1%" or only the top 20% bullshit.
If the rich can afford to pay an extra few million or several hundred thousands more on taxes, then it's not unreasonable to ask everyone else to pay a couple extra thousand or hundreds on their taxes as well.
The revenue we get will far surpass a tax hike on just the top bracket.
Raising taxes equally on everyone equally, unless you're responding to Moon-Quid as opposed to actual Quid, is not similar to what he's said. :-p
The notion of "fairness" is ridiculous given the current wage gap and real wage stagnation for the working class. Things are currently EXTREMELY unfair and everyone knows this. Some just choose not to admit it.
a larger increase on those of means has comparatively little impact than any significant tax increase on the lower and middle classes
trying to argue that everyone could endure a similar tax hike is fucking stupid because those at the top would not find their day to day lives affected in quite the same way as pretty much everyone else
Its not unreasonable to ask for more from the people who own most of the stuff. Asking for an equal tax raise on everyone implies everyone is on an equal footing to start with.
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Nbspshe laughs, like Godher mind's like a diamondRegistered Userregular
So when do we raise taxes on anyone that is not the top 1%?
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Productivity and making money are not somehow intrinsically tied.
There is definitely some sort of connection. At the very least productivity is a ceiling on wages since a business wouldn't last long if it paid out more in wages than those wages were producing.
Well, yes, but that's only on the whole.
Individually, most workers are paid a fraction of what their productivite is, while CEO's get paid dozens, if not hundreds, times over what they are actually worth.
SSI isn't Social Security. It's Supplemental Security Income, which is long term disability.
I die a little inside every time someone uses it to mean Social Security.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
1) Yes, I am taking the position that the only way to determine the economic worth of anything being traded, whether goods or labor, is what someone will pay you for it. This is not "an extreme quantitative neoliberal position." It is the default position of economics! How much is your house worth? What you can get people to pay for it.
This is not the "default position of [mainstream orthodox] economics." It is a position that characterizes the Austrian school. Marginalism is the mainstream position.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I was writing something longer, but I'll keep it short: wages don't measure the value of labor, they measure the prevailing price of labor. They can both be too high or too low.
While extreme, the most obvious example of this is slavery. Slaves produce economic value, but don't get paid (or get paid effectively nothing). Slavery is on the extreme edge, but the general principle of people's labor being priced like they only have so much choice is true for so many workers.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
So when do we raise taxes on anyone that is not the top 1%?
If we are raising taxes on the top 1% we are, actually, raising taxes on everyone by the way the tax code works. You are taxed on a baseset of your income, so your income from $1->$25,000 is taxed at a certain rate, then your 25,001->$50,000 is taxed at a certain rate, and so on and so forth.
The issue at hand is the $250,000->$TEXAS taxation rate has been lowered, and lowered, and lowered over time with no added value shown.
Posts
Nope
http://inequality.org/income-inequality/
Though I'm perfectly fine raising taxes across the board for the top 20% or so.
There is definitely some sort of connection. At the very least productivity is a ceiling on wages since a business wouldn't last long if it paid out more in wages than those wages were producing.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
You're confused about the issue, so let's take it to an extreme and see if that clarifies things. Suppose we set our UBI to average wage income and taxed all earned income at 100%. Would anyone work? No, aside from the vanity projects and general volunteerism we mentioned before. Ergo there would be no labor to speak of to fund the UBI and the country would collapse. Now suppose you set the UBI to some lower value, where you only have to tax all income at 50%. What happens then? Lots of people leave the workforce initially. The tax rate on the remainder must go up. More people will decide it's not worth it and leave. This is the slow-motion version of the labor collapse. How high a UBI can you set without triggering something like this? That's a quantitative question to which no one knows the answer. We can only look at proxies like current employment rates and try to develop estimates. Perhaps you think it would take a very high UBI to set off this cascade. You are free to argue that. But pretending this scenario would never occur because Scandinavia or top marginal tax rates in the 60s really undermines your credibility.
And yes, relative wages are intrinsically tied to productivity. Specifically, they are set by how much value a person provides in that job, and how hard it is to get someone to do it. But this, too, is not the point. The point is that you cannot sustain the economy by having everyone do things that they find fulfilling, and that activities like college tutoring simply aren't as valuable as industrial engineering however much more fulfilling they may be. Wages are how we get people to do the second instead of the first.
Sometimes there's definitely a connection, sometimes there isn't at all is my point. Specifically in response to the idea that wages indicate how productive work is.
What you've suggested is implementing UBI in as terrible a way as possible in order to make it sound bad. Which isn't something I find especially convincing. Especially since you're suggesting a flat tax across all wages, something no one else in this thread has suggested.
And again no relative wages aren't even tied to productivity. Just ask minorities. And while you can't sustain an economy by letting everyone do what they find fulfilling, you can sustain it by forcing companies to pay jobs for the actual value they provide rather than the value they provide minus the threat of starvation if you don't do that job.
That is not the relevant graph from that thread. This is:
No I'm actually not suggesting implementing it in this way. I am creating an extreme example to try to provoke some understanding of what the possible downsides are of a UBI, and why they have to be taken seriously - something none of its proponents are doing. And I did not specify how taxes would be distributed across incomes at all.
The second half of your post is a collection of slogans. Are you actually interested in working out some understanding of the economics of the UBI in this thread, or is it just a liberal totem that must be defended from all comers?
You're basically taking an extreme quantitative neoliberal position on economics, that the only way to determine the worth of anything is through its monetary value and that the only way to motivate people to do things is through providing monetary value, and this motivation is dominant, has no margins, and is granular. You are modelling human behaviour as per the traditional capitalist model of the rational actor, and then you're arguing that according to your model, UBI won't work, but the conclusion is essentially baked into your initial premises, and honestly, there's just no conversation to be had with you on UBI if you're going to be like that
Doubly so if you're intent on recasting it as "having everyone do things that they find fulfilling," which is not, as far as I understand it, the objective of UBI.
The overall objectives would be:
1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.
1) Yes, I am taking the position that the only way to determine the economic worth of anything being traded, whether goods or labor, is what someone will pay you for it. This is not "an extreme quantitative neoliberal position." It is the default position of economics! How much is your house worth? What you can get people to pay for it. Does it have worth to you besides that? Sure, childhood memories, a familiar neighborhood, a unique door knob that you happen to love. Were you imagining a version of economics that somehow takes these things into account in addition to the selling price? Perhaps in this model, the economic value of giving birth is infinite, for surely there is no greater gift than a human life, etc. As warming as that thought is, it's not very useful for discussing tax policy or figuring out the implications of a UBI.
2) I am not suggesting that moneyr is the only means of motivating people. (Did you read anything from the discussion on the last page?) I'm suggesting that humans left to themselves will not distribute their labor efficiently and the results are catastrophic in a modern economy. You disagree? Found a commune and see how it goes, on a small scale, with people who know each other. Then imagine what it will be like with the nation as a whole. How do we avoid this? We can either organize work gangs, or we can allocate more resources to people who do more valuable things with their time.
3) Perhaps you missed the part in Heffling's post where he talked about how UBI would free people to pursue self-actualization. Or, like, the fifty other times in this thread people have mentioned that. The reality is that every time I respond to someone's claim about what the UBI accomplishes, someone else pops up to insist that no, that's not the motivation for it all! How dare you construct such a straw man! There needs to be a term for this. Maybe rotating goal posts?
All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.
But those downsides don't exist unless it's implemented that way. With drastically higher taxation across the board decades ago the American economy was still fine. So no, higher taxes aren't going to cause a downward spiral of unemployment.
And pointing out that wages =/= the value of the work isn't a liberal totem. You're the one who claimed how much the market pays is how much the work is worth but that is literally untrue as demonstrated by the myriad of factors that influence what the market will pay for work ie minorities getting payed significantly less for identical work.
Taxes in the US were once higher and we were fine. Therefore there is no upper limit to how much we can tax income.
Is that your position? If not, do you see why talking about how we can raise taxes by some amount is not an answer to the fact that there is an upper limit to how much you can tax before destroying the economy? Do you see why we need to reason quantitatively, not qualitatively? And on that note, both total tax collection and total income tax collection have hardly changed at all in fifty years. That would be the difference between nominal high marginal tax rates and what you actually collect in revenue.
Re: wages, I started to write a response, and realized I was writing exactly what I wrote in my last two replies to you. 1) There is no better means of determining the value of work, 2) It makes no difference to the point I actually made in that post about wages motivating more valuable work. But that's not what I was referring to in my post as a liberal totem. As is obvious if you read it. Which makes me think that the answer to my question from that post is "no." So I'm gonna disengage.
So basically spend more money on people in need? Well, instead of forcing people to buy certain things with programs like food stamps, why not just cut them a check and let them best decide how to get back on their feet? Capitalism is the most efficient way of distributing good after all. Not perfect. Not even close. But way better than a government mandate to buy certain things.
It's clear that taxation needs no upper limit not my position. Kindly stop taking things to ridiculous extremes to try and make your point. And there are plenty of better means in determining the value of work. One would be providing a guaranteed income so that people who do it aren't faced with the threat of homelessness and starvation. We already do this to a degree. People don't get paid a minimum wage because that's what the market has deemed is acceptable. They get paid that because the government decided all work has a minimal value. Which is a shit ton better than the market doing so on its own.
Edit: Seriously though, a lot of your opposition seems to be in grossly inaccurate assumptions about people's positions. No one is saying give everyone enough money to live in absurd luxury forever or to raise taxes to 100% on everyone. Those positions would indeed be foolish which is why no one has said them.
That UBI does a thing does not mean that it's the objective. It's also not "all people". I mean... just Google "basic income". If you think @Heffling is bringing it up when it shouldn't be brought up, then call him out on it, instead of tilting at his windmills (though it does not seem to me that it's Heffling who first used the word, at least not according to the forum's search function). If anybody's saying that the objective of UBI is freaking eudaimonia, then they don't understand UBI (see @The Big Levinsky 's post).
No, because more careful economic studies clearly acknowledge that there is unpaid labour that has value to the economy, like having children and raising them. We also know that the capitalist system is not inherently efficient, that there is significant potential that is wasted due to its inefficiencies. The UBI experiment done in Manitoba in the 70s found that new mothers and teenagers were the two groups that worked significantly less, instead diverting to raising their children and taking on more education. That you ignore these economic benefits is, quite frankly, a stake in the heart of your economic analysis, because you've intentionally limited yourself to a shoddy model that is incapable of measuring the benefits of UBI.
It is precisely an extreme quantitative neoliberal position to attempt to shrink sociology into quantitative game theory. It's fallacious and foolish, and again, if that's the world you're living in, then there remains no talking to you about UBI, because for you, there is no value in children and no value in providing opportunity to brilliant but poor teenagers.
Cutting a check is how we used to do it. I see no problem with going back to that. But that's not a UBI, unless you define the term such that the US and most welfare states already have or had one. In which case I have no idea what this thread is about.
Yes, by having UBI.
Edit: Also, one of the advantages of UBI that you've ignored is that it's supposed to actually cost less than traditional welfare systems, by not providing disincentives to work, by reducing administrative overhead, and being better at prevention rather than response (particularly in cost areas like policing, health care, justice system, shelter, etc,). Whether it actually does or not isn't a conclusion I can draw based on what I know, but I've certainly read that it has in many of its various experimental implementations.
Then we're more similar than you think.
If we must raise taxes, then I'm actually fine with raising taxes on everyone equally. None of this "tax hike for the top 1%" or only the top 20% bullshit.
If the rich can afford to pay an extra few million or several hundred thousands more on taxes, then it's not unreasonable to ask everyone else to pay a couple extra thousand or hundreds on their taxes as well.
The revenue we get will far surpass a tax hike on just the top bracket.
Raising taxes equally on everyone equally, unless you're responding to Moon-Quid as opposed to actual Quid, is not similar to what he's said. :-p
The notion of "fairness" is ridiculous given the current wage gap and real wage stagnation for the working class. Things are currently EXTREMELY unfair and everyone knows this. Some just choose not to admit it.
a larger increase on those of means has comparatively little impact than any significant tax increase on the lower and middle classes
trying to argue that everyone could endure a similar tax hike is fucking stupid because those at the top would not find their day to day lives affected in quite the same way as pretty much everyone else
Going by the current distribution of wealth not for quite some time.
Bernie Sanders can tell you more.
When we raise them on the next top 19%
That's unlikely to ever happen. The Pareto principle is like a natural condition of the universe.
this has fuck all to do with wealth distribution
the vast majority of the economic activity that fuels our economy comes from the lower classes
Excellent.
Then you should have no problem hiking taxes on the ultra rich.
The universe will surely rectify their losses in no time.
This is a jumble of words that means nothing.
Well, yes, but that's only on the whole.
Individually, most workers are paid a fraction of what their productivite is, while CEO's get paid dozens, if not hundreds, times over what they are actually worth.
SSI isn't Social Security. It's Supplemental Security Income, which is long term disability.
I die a little inside every time someone uses it to mean Social Security.
This is not the "default position of [mainstream orthodox] economics." It is a position that characterizes the Austrian school. Marginalism is the mainstream position.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Second alternate answer: after the overall tax burden is redistributed so it is no longer regressive.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
While extreme, the most obvious example of this is slavery. Slaves produce economic value, but don't get paid (or get paid effectively nothing). Slavery is on the extreme edge, but the general principle of people's labor being priced like they only have so much choice is true for so many workers.
If we are raising taxes on the top 1% we are, actually, raising taxes on everyone by the way the tax code works. You are taxed on a baseset of your income, so your income from $1->$25,000 is taxed at a certain rate, then your 25,001->$50,000 is taxed at a certain rate, and so on and so forth.
The issue at hand is the $250,000->$TEXAS taxation rate has been lowered, and lowered, and lowered over time with no added value shown.