There is no reason why the federal government can't apportion say a land tax among states-it would just be up to the states to figure out how they want to collect it.
Actually, my understanding is that the current rulings are the constitution _does_ give the Federal government the right to control _monopolies_. That could pretty easily be applied to vast personal wealth. There are already federal regulations on how wealth folks can trade in financial markets.
Anyhow, I suspect that if a constitutional amendment were proposed that introduced a limited wealth tax and reduced the income tax on most of the population, such an amendment would pass.
Actually, Karl Marx was a foreign correspondent for a GOP newspaper and encouraged his followers to join the GOP. There was a pretty serious "socialist" camp in the GOP until they split into the Progressive movement with Robert Lafollete.
In a truly high risk environment, you'll expect to see a distribution of "winners" that is different than what we are seeing. That is why taxes on concentration of wealth can work-they can be taxes on economic rent rather than on simple returns that reflect risk.
Now, I would agree there is a chance of throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, with Nader's proposal by eliminating taxes on income under $100K/year he has the potential to heavily reward small entrepreneurs-who tend to be serious risk takers.
Nader's statement simply calls for taxing both capital gains _and_ other income the same--but he's also moving significantly away from the idea that income should be taxed towards taxation of concentration of wealth, pollution, negative externalities and land/real estate.
I'd personally like to see the limit for income taxation raised well beyond the $100K figure-and I think that if properly structured land taxes, taxes on monopoly power and pollution taxes could do that. In the end, very few people would even need to file tax returns _and_ social programs could be maintained or even expanded a bit.
I don't think what you are identifying with is capitalism-it sounds more like welfare for the rich.
Better Immigration has ratings of congress critters on immigration and "Worker Replacement" programs like H-1b. It should be noted that even Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus mostly voted for the expansion of L-1 visas last year--there is no real, steadfast voice on tech issues as far as I can see. I intend to vote for Nader this fall--at least he stood up in a small way for tech folks. I will also vote against _any_ incumbent that voted for H-1b/L-1 expansion.
Re:some useful data--middle class "size" is fallin
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Inflation isn't a very good measure here. You really need to look at _disposable_ income(one measure if after housing, insurance, taxes and transportation). You can make folks "rich" by this measure by simply moving them from Wyoming to Los Angeles and keeping income constant (in real dollars).
$49,999 doesn't go very far in Silicon Valley-but goes a quite a bit further in Wyoming.
Another major factor here: you need to look at the value of certain goods/services that are made at home. If you look at my article, there is a link to a review of "The Two Income Trap". In 1967, there was a larger portion of women staying at home with kids.
If members of couple both go to work and don't have-and move to a high rent district their economic well being may be worse-even if their income is greater. Their income is greater,but so are their expenses(i.e. higher rent, more meals out) plus they may be exposed to more crime, stress and lack of opportunity to raise a family.
Getting good measures of quality is hard to come by. What is clear is that skilled jobs are being lost and less skilled service sector jobs created--and the whole process is debt driven.
I was _not_ paid to write what I did--which is more than I can say for the folks at the Federal Reserve et al that have white washed the facts that US job growth isn't happening as fast as population growth-and that population growth is driven largely by immigration. Please, read my article--and check the links. I would appreciate constructive and substantial criticism if you can offer it.
Re:Tentacles of Rage & Treason
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
On the issue immigration, there is serious difference between elite and popular opinion.
The simple fact is that job growth in the US is not happening as fast as immigration.
It isn't an issue of blaming immigrants-but a question of the policy involved(and the folks that created athat policy) _and_ the real economic effects of that policy. During most of its history, the US economy was a vehicle for job growth that outstripped the rate of immigration. That has changed--and any likely mechanisms to reverse that (i.e. opening a new frontier or a major change in tax policy) are going to take time to have their effects felt.
I think that there is a serious point here. The concentration of assets in recent years has become pretty extreme. Theoretically that could be handled by tax policy. Nader's tax policy is an attempt at that direct. I have some issues with it-but I think it is far better than what the democrats-or republicans have some up with so far.
First off, I said Nader's plan was _better_ not perfect. The key aspects of Nader's plan IMHO are: 1) removal of the majority of the middle class
from tax roles(exemption of income under
$100K)
2) Substituting revenue from
pollution taxes
a tax on concentrated wealth(over
$5 Million net worth)
land taxes
increasing of corporate taxes
The reaso I think those taxes with work is for the most part Nader is aiming to tax either negative extrenalities or economic rent(monopoly rent or land rent). Even Milton Friedman admits that taxes on rent tend to be among the "least bad" taxes. If I were advising nader, I would tend to advise me to go easy on increasing income taxes, capital gains and estate taxes. I think he'll get more income from a land tax than he's expecting--particularly if that tax were focused on increases in real estate values that occur because of the changes in tax law.
The tax proposal at www.fairtax.org is economically fairly similar to what we have now-with the big exceptions that 1) it tends to ecourage savings 2) the overall cost of collection is much lower
than the federal income tax(i.e. tax lawyers
don't get as much pork).
Basically I _can_ believe that fairtax.org's proposal is somewhat better than what we have now-though i think it will result in more concentration of wealth than the folks at Cato are predicting. The Nader proposal would I think have even a more dramatic effect-and could be improved even more if it lowered the administrative overhead for major corporations a bit.
Re:Flying Car: Completely Impractical
on
NYT On Flying Cars
·
· Score: 1
Actually, the idea of these flying cars is that they'll have sophisticated, idio-proof avionics. The FAA has been actively working in that direction. Now, that said, I think we'll see "flying taxis" before we see most of these as personal cars. With a taxi, you can assume a modestly trained operator-which makes a big difference.
Re:Slashdot becoming fascist?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
It is really pretty easy to allow folks to have kids. The question is why the powers that be have chosen to stay attached to social policies/tax structures that prevent westerners from having kids and import a new population rather than change those tax structures and social policies. For example, I fully expect that if Ralph Nader's tax proposals were adopted(Which would move the US towards a tax structure more similar to what it had in the 50's) we'd see an increased family size.
Re:Tariffs make things BETTER, not worse
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
The big thing to remember about tarriffs: they are substitutes for _other_ taxes. So the real question here is:which is worse, an income tax or a tarriff?
The problem is that these forcasts aren't really conditional. What they need to do is make the forcasts in terms of the various events coming up that we know may or may not happen. For example:
If the security alert goes to red how does the chance of Bush vs Kerry change?
How do the polls after each debate relate to the election result?
How do the major economic figures that will come out before the election affect the election result?
Re:Immigration in and of itself is NOT the problem
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
The tax regulatory structure in the US has made it relatively expensive to have kids-particularly if you aspire to raise them the way most middle class folks were raised. That structure could be changed. It might be a seriously adjustment for some wealthy people-but it _could be done.
Posting something from one of the Nader sites. Sincerely, the only places you will get anything that resembles sincere opinion today is on the far right(i.e. Buchanan/vdare) and the far left(i.e. Nader). I happen to be a Nader supporter and feel that for the progressives to do anything meaningful, they _will_ have to address trade and immigration-as well as a major reform of the tax system(just FYI I like Nader's proposal better than what Bush is pushing at www.fairtax.org)
Here's the thing: Bush has chosen to buy into the whole system. He didn't have to-he had enough money to buy something else. Quite frankly, I think he would have done the world less harm staying a drunken coke-head than becoming the particular type of intellectual prostitute he has become.
Anyone who occupies the presidency right now without using some imagination and vision is IMHO a problem. The country has some serious problems and they need to be addressed-not ignored.
Re:Immigration in and of itself is NOT the problem
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Part of what drove H-1b was the need to prop up Bay Area real estate values.
The thing is the extreme compensation of executives is needed in part to keep these guys identifying with the present system. Japanese companies get run with _much_ lower levels of compensation-and Japan isn't exactly a low rent area. However, a lot of common behaviour in the US would get a Japanese exec killed I expect.
Re:Immigration in and of itself is NOT the problem
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
The folks that I've known that were having trouble making ends meet on large incomes were typically: 1) folks with families 2) in very high rent areas
It really is rediculous how much it takes to raise a family in the Bay Area. I live in a fairly modest house in Washington and an equivalent house in the bay area would easily involve 4 times the cost and 8 times the debt that I have--and would involve much higher auto, tax and insurance expenses. If I were offered a $200K/year job in the Bay Area I would commute back and forth on weekends rather than try to raise a family there. If you look in the links in my article, the key here is disposable income. One the whole income left after: taxes, housing, transportation, insurance has _decreased_ the last 30 years-even with two folks working. That goes beyond what you are talking about. Now _part_ of the phenomena here is that a lot of white folks are travelling _long_ distances to avoid raising their families in urban areas in which they feel rather out of place-and may not be entirely safe for their families(or at least that is how they perceive it).
The way I personally see it: extreme racism/bigotry is tolerated among the rich. Hell, there is even a large country club in LA that explicitly excludes Jews still!
Poorer whites get _crucified_ for even milder forms of xenophobia.
Now, I see that as a basic problem. IMHO the moral standards for those with extreme privelege ought to be _higher_. Just FYI I _don't_ like seeing folks unkind of unfair to those unlike themselves-however there are other problems operating here. US Immigration and Trade policy may be Politically Correct Sociopathy-aimed at people that are "racists" but that doesn't mean there isn't a very, negative sum game being played here.
Re:Damn, whatever happened to just being humane?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Well, the piece was basically a piece of policy analysis. Now, I would agree that American has developed a certain "mean spirited" tendency towards those on the low end of the economic scale. That is actually something that I talk about with some of the other vdare contributors-and something that we tend to have a difference of opinion on(the main thing that we agree on is that US immigration policy has some serious problems).
Now I disagree that the problem can be "solved" religiously or politically-at best I would expect that to give us some time to deal with te problem. I think that a real solution is going to have to involve the creation of real frontiers. When the world is full, there _will_ be a tendency to devalue more people. There is a need to develop consciousness that there are a _lot_ of resources available to humans.
Re:Slashdot becoming fascist?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
One thing to get: with folks like Malkin, Roberts, Francis and Sailor Brimelow has to take pretty much _all_ their columns. Now, I agree that it is a shame that the entire topic of immigration policy has been left up to the Right-and most of what is published the by the left on the topic is just plane stupid. I'd like to help change that. Now that said, the real corruption in the US is in the Center-the Right folks like Buchanan are at least sincere-which is more than I can say about either Bush or Kerry.
Re:Slashdot becoming fascist?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
By your definition Abraham Lincoln was clearly a fascist-which IMHO makes your definition absurd. Folks on both the Nationalist side(Nazi's) and Internetionalist side(Communists) have committed atrocities. What makes you so willing to think that the Vdare folks are inclined to become mass killers?
Slashdot Mirror
There is no reason why the federal government can't apportion say a land tax among states-it would just be up to the states to figure out how they want to collect it.
Actually, my understanding is that the current rulings are the constitution _does_ give the Federal government the right to control _monopolies_. That could pretty easily be applied to vast personal wealth. There are already federal regulations on how wealth folks can trade in financial markets.
Anyhow, I suspect that if a constitutional amendment were proposed that introduced a limited wealth tax and reduced the income tax on most of the population, such an amendment would pass.
Actually, Karl Marx was a foreign correspondent for a GOP newspaper and encouraged his followers to join the GOP. There was a pretty serious "socialist" camp in the GOP until they split into the Progressive movement with Robert Lafollete.
In a truly high risk environment, you'll expect to see a distribution of "winners" that is different than what we are seeing. That is why taxes on concentration of wealth can work-they can be taxes on economic rent rather than on simple returns that reflect risk.
Now, I would agree there is a chance of throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, with Nader's proposal by eliminating taxes on income under $100K/year he has the potential to heavily reward small entrepreneurs-who tend to be serious risk takers.
Nader's statement simply calls for taxing both capital gains _and_ other income the same--but he's also moving significantly away from the idea that income should be taxed towards taxation of concentration of wealth, pollution, negative externalities and land/real estate.
I'd personally like to see the limit for income taxation raised well beyond the $100K figure-and I think that if properly structured land taxes, taxes on monopoly power and pollution taxes could do that. In the end, very few people would even need to file tax returns _and_ social programs could be maintained or even expanded a bit.
I don't think what you are identifying with is capitalism-it sounds more like welfare for the rich.
Chris Cannon has been an extreme supporter of Worker Replacement Programs like H-1b/L-1.
Inflation isn't a very good measure here. You really need to look at _disposable_ income(one measure if after housing, insurance, taxes and transportation). You can make folks "rich" by this measure by simply moving them from Wyoming to Los Angeles and keeping income constant (in real dollars).
$49,999 doesn't go very far in Silicon Valley-but goes a quite a bit further in Wyoming.
Another major factor here: you need to look at the value of certain goods/services that are made at home. If you look at my article, there is a link to a review of "The Two Income Trap". In 1967, there was a larger portion of women staying at home with kids.
If members of couple both go to work and don't have-and move to a high rent district their economic well being may be worse-even if their income is greater. Their income is greater,but so are their expenses(i.e. higher rent, more meals out) plus they may be exposed to more crime, stress and lack of opportunity to raise a family.
RJB
Getting good measures of quality is hard to come by. What is clear is that skilled jobs are being lost and less skilled service sector jobs created--and the whole process is debt driven.
I was _not_ paid to write what I did--which is more than I can say for the folks at the Federal Reserve et al that have white washed the facts that US job growth isn't happening as fast as population growth-and that population growth is driven largely by immigration. Please, read my article--and check the links. I would appreciate constructive and substantial criticism if you can offer it.
On the issue immigration, there is serious difference between elite and popular opinion.
The simple fact is that job growth in the US is not happening as fast as immigration.
It isn't an issue of blaming immigrants-but a question of the policy involved(and the folks that created athat policy) _and_ the real economic effects of that policy. During most of its history, the US economy was a vehicle for job growth that outstripped the rate of immigration. That has changed--and any likely mechanisms to reverse that (i.e. opening a new frontier or a major change in tax policy) are going to take time to have their effects felt.
I think that there is a serious point here. The concentration of assets in recent years has become pretty extreme. Theoretically that could be handled by tax policy. Nader's tax policy is an attempt at that direct. I have some issues with it-but I think it is far better than what the democrats-or republicans have some up with so far.
First off, I said Nader's plan was _better_ not perfect. The key aspects of Nader's plan IMHO are:
1) removal of the majority of the middle class
from tax roles(exemption of income under
$100K)
2) Substituting revenue from
pollution taxes
a tax on concentrated wealth(over
$5 Million net worth)
land taxes
increasing of corporate taxes
The reaso I think those taxes with work is for the most part Nader is aiming to tax either negative extrenalities or economic rent(monopoly rent or land rent). Even Milton Friedman admits
that taxes on rent tend to be among the "least bad" taxes. If I were advising nader, I would tend to advise me to go easy on increasing income taxes, capital gains and estate taxes. I think he'll get more income from a land tax than he's expecting--particularly if that tax were focused on increases in real estate values that occur because of the changes in tax law.
The tax proposal at www.fairtax.org is economically fairly similar to what we have now-with the big exceptions that
1) it tends to ecourage savings
2) the overall cost of collection is much lower
than the federal income tax(i.e. tax lawyers
don't get as much pork).
Basically I _can_ believe that fairtax.org's proposal is somewhat better than what we have now-though i think it will result in more concentration of wealth than the folks at Cato are predicting. The Nader proposal would I think have even a more dramatic effect-and could be improved even more if it lowered the administrative overhead for major corporations a bit.
Actually, the idea of these flying cars is that they'll have sophisticated, idio-proof avionics. The FAA has been actively working in that direction. Now, that said, I think we'll see "flying taxis" before we see most of these as personal cars. With a taxi, you can assume a modestly trained operator-which makes a big difference.
It is really pretty easy to allow folks to have kids. The question is why the powers that be have chosen to stay attached to social policies/tax structures that prevent westerners from having kids and import a new population rather than change those tax structures and social policies. For example, I fully expect that if Ralph Nader's tax proposals were adopted(Which would move the US towards a tax structure more similar to what it had in the 50's) we'd see an increased family size.
The big thing to remember about tarriffs: they are substitutes for _other_ taxes. So the real question here is :which is worse, an income tax or a tarriff?
The problem is that these forcasts aren't really conditional. What they need to do is make the forcasts in terms of the various events coming up that we know may or may not happen. For example:
If the security alert goes to red how does the chance of Bush vs Kerry change?
How do the polls after each debate relate to the election result?
How do the major economic figures that will come out before the election affect the election result?
The tax regulatory structure in the US has made it relatively expensive to have kids-particularly if you aspire to raise them the way most middle class folks were raised. That structure could be changed. It might be a seriously adjustment for some wealthy people-but it _could be done.
Posting something from one of the Nader sites. Sincerely, the only places you will get anything that resembles sincere opinion today is on the far right(i.e. Buchanan/vdare) and the far left(i.e. Nader). I happen to be a Nader supporter and feel that for the progressives to do anything meaningful, they _will_ have to address trade and immigration-as well as a major reform of the tax system(just FYI I like Nader's proposal better than what Bush is pushing at www.fairtax.org)
Anyone who occupies the presidency right now without using some imagination and vision is IMHO a problem. The country has some serious problems and they need to be addressed-not ignored.
The thing is the extreme compensation of executives is needed in part to keep these guys identifying with the present system. Japanese companies get run with _much_ lower levels of compensation-and Japan isn't exactly a low rent area. However, a lot of common behaviour in the US would get a Japanese exec killed I expect.
The folks that I've known that were having trouble making ends meet on large incomes were typically:
1) folks with families
2) in very high rent areas
It really is rediculous how much it takes to raise a family in the Bay Area. I live in a fairly modest house in Washington and an equivalent house in the bay area would easily involve 4 times the cost and 8 times the debt that I have--and would involve much higher auto, tax and insurance expenses. If I were offered a $200K/year job in the Bay Area I would commute back and forth on weekends rather than try to raise a family there. If you look in the links in my article, the key here is disposable income. One the whole income left after:
taxes, housing, transportation, insurance has _decreased_ the last 30 years-even with two folks working. That goes beyond what you are talking about. Now _part_ of the phenomena here is that a lot of white folks are travelling _long_ distances to avoid raising their families in urban areas in which they feel rather out of place-and may not be entirely safe for their families(or at least that is how they perceive it).
The way I personally see it:
extreme racism/bigotry is tolerated among the rich. Hell, there is even a large country club in LA that explicitly excludes Jews still!
Poorer whites get _crucified_ for even milder forms of xenophobia.
Now, I see that as a basic problem. IMHO the moral standards for those with extreme privelege ought to be _higher_. Just FYI I _don't_ like seeing folks unkind of unfair to those unlike themselves-however there are other problems operating here. US Immigration and Trade policy may be Politically Correct Sociopathy-aimed at people that are "racists" but that doesn't mean there isn't a very, negative sum game being played here.
Well, the piece was basically a piece of policy analysis. Now, I would agree that American has developed a certain "mean spirited" tendency towards those on the low end of the economic scale. That is actually something that I talk about with some of the other vdare contributors-and something that we tend to have a difference of opinion on(the main thing that we agree on is that US immigration policy has some serious problems).
Now I disagree that the problem can be "solved" religiously or politically-at best I would expect that to give us some time to deal with te problem. I think that a real solution is going to have to involve the creation of real frontiers. When the world is full, there _will_ be a tendency to devalue more people. There is a need to develop consciousness that there are a _lot_ of resources available to humans.
One thing to get: with folks like Malkin, Roberts, Francis and Sailor Brimelow has to take pretty much _all_ their columns. Now, I agree that it is a shame that the entire topic of immigration policy has been left up to the Right-and most of what is published the by the left on the topic is just plane stupid. I'd like to help change that. Now that said, the real corruption in the US is in the Center-the Right folks like Buchanan are at least sincere-which is more than I can say about either Bush or Kerry.
By your definition Abraham Lincoln was clearly a fascist-which IMHO makes your definition absurd. Folks on both the Nationalist side(Nazi's) and Internetionalist side(Communists) have committed atrocities. What makes you so willing to think that the Vdare folks are inclined to become mass killers?