"It may not be flamebait, but it's ignorant as hell. How dare the poster tell others how to spend their free time, when they are actually out helping people."
The grandparent used the existence of the farm as proof of the charity's efficiency, as opposed to the recruitment gimmick that it actually is. I'm pointing out that it is not efficient, and that if helping people is their main priority, then they should go in another direction.
"If it is okay for people to sit on their ass and play X-Box, why is it wrong for a bunch of like-minded people to get together and help others out in their spare time. God forbid people have fun or feel good while helping others..."
If these people think that their cause is so important, then they should realize that people die because of their insistence on having fun. Having participated in a lot of these things myself(My school forced me to, now I resort to strict donations), it seems to me that most people look at this thing as an opportunity to have fun with friends, and gain some respect or community service hours from their community for "helping out". From my experience, most of them couldn't care less what is actually done with the money.
I guess it's fine that we managed to co-opt this narcissism toward charity, but it's not a personal virtue.
"Life is not about efficiency."
With all due respect, tell that to the people who starved to death because the LDS volunteers needed to "have fun" to contribute.
"Sir, you're assuming that all Mormons are equally likely to volunteer to help out with every project, and not taking into account how many volunteers may be youth, retired, or unemployed."
If they are able to do farm work and warehouse stocking, they are physically qualified for more productive jobs. Farm workers, especially in third world countries(Don't bring up transport costs, they are essentially zero), make extremely low wages. If these marginally productive volunteers spent the time as a part-time temp at Walmart, or washing cars, they would be able to produce more food then if they did the farm work themselves.
"You're also assuming that choosing to donate or volunteer is an either/or proposition, i.e. that those who choose to volunteer do not donate, and vice-versa."
No, I'm not. I'm arguing that they should put all of their effort into donation, and that the volunteering is nothing more than an inefficient gimmick.
"I apologize, but the "Flamebait" tag may be justified, as your post seems more eager to criticize than to find out the underlying causes of things."
What does that even mean? Someone is trumpeting an inefficient farming method as proof of the LDS's efficiency, and I am reminding him that it is not efficient at all, and then providing several alternative methods his church could use to help the poor more.
"Assuming that would actually happen -- and assuming that members could easily make more money by working a few more hours. Most educated people end up in salaried positions, exempt from overtime."
Agricultural workers are extremely cheap. If the guy did a part time stint at Walmart or washed cars, he would be far more productive.
"Emotionally and spiritually, it's a lot different to take a few hours and get your hands dirty rather than just writing a slightly larger check."
Yes, it is. But he/she helps the world more by cutting a larger check. It's a personal fault on their part that they preferred the illusion of making a difference at the expense of the cause they are trying to promote.
But I realize that charitable giving has some deranged incentives behind it, and that we need to stoke people's ego's to make them give money. But it bothered me when the grandparent trumpeted this farm, not as a marketing gimmick, but as an efficiency measure.
"1) Who is conducting these polls? Who is collecting the numbers to call? Who does the calling? Who gets to design the questions?"
Who designs ballots? Who is in charge of voter registration? These are difficult questions that are difficult to answer immediately, but where society has found effective solutions. Usually we deal with it by allowing opposite parties to contest the wording of questions ahead of time, and the judiciary sorts it out pretty quickly.
I'd imagine that we wouldn't actually use current polling methods, which are severely restricted by privacy law. This is because it is extremely difficult to avoid sampling error by picking truly random samples of the population. Instead, we call "random" numbers, with a high level of non-response levels. Mathematically, this creates problems.
Governments are not saddled with such restrictions. The government already has an enormous list of federally eligible voters(social security database), they can just pick about 10,000 random qualifying social security numbers, make compliance mandatory, and send a team of qualified agents to use the full resources of the NSA and FBI to track them down to ask them questions.
Repeat a couple of times with different teams(carefully vetted by multiple political parties) to make sure nothing weird happens, and you'll have an extremely reliable picture of what the public wants(Much more so then conventional elections), for a fraction of the cost.
"2)Do we really want people who are too lazy to get off the couch every 2 years and vote to have that much of a say in government?"
Considering that the government takes their money, and imprisons them whoever they disobey the government's rules, yes. If you don't want to share a government with them, move, or pay them to move.
"3) How are we to know if the people polled are of eligible voting age? Or that they are even permitted by law to vote (they could be convicted felons, incompetent, etc.)? Or even citizens of the U.S.?"
That information is available to the Federal government. Any fraud could be detected by the teams of investigators.
"4) How much public policy do we want to actually entrust in the hands of a highly opinionated but entirely ignorant populace? Should foreign affairs with Burkina Faso be a subject of polling? Or how about complex economic matters? Again, who decides on what issues we poll on? Does the public's knowledge - or complete lack thereof - play a role in what we ask? How do we determine public knowledge?"
Just ask "Do you believe that we should devolve diplomatic and economic decisions to separate specialized departments of experts, subject to over-ride by referendum and congress?". At that point, let congress write laws, but give the judiciary the right to repeal laws that go against polling results, just as they do for unconstitutional laws.
As for your issues question, how do we pick ballot initiatives in states? Normally we stipulate that any question that is backed by a petition with X voters is put on the ballot. I'd imagine something similar would work for polling.
"5) As to questions of "war and peace", do keep in mind that public opinion polls tend to support war at the moment - and it's not all because the evil corporations you demonize so much are responsible for it, either."
Not really, I doubt that more than 20% of the population would support an invasion of Mexico. The last German Prime minister actually ran a campaign that he didn't invade Iraq. You could either place constitutional limits on war, or require large super-majorities for war.
"6) Countries need to depend on each other in the long-run: how will this work if a country is commanded at its core by a very, very fickle public?"
The public is very fickle. If you look at our approval ratings of foreign country, they are extremely stable. This would be a problem.
"I would _not_ vote someone who blindly follows the opinion polls results to keep himself in charge. I'm not sure about how democracy works exactly in your country, but in most of the civilized world, you choose someone through your vote then - if he's actually in charge - _he_ takes decisions, not you."
So the leader actively resisting the collective will of the people is a good thing? A president is not a great leader to be fearlessly followed, he is a manager of a enormous organisation that collects money from the people... to serve the needs of those people.
Don't think the people know what they want? Don't take their money, and don't throw them in prison whenever they violate your rules.
Just because managerial restraints kept the people from being in control in the past, does not justify that now.
I want my president to follow polls to the letter. If he begins to inject his own "convictions", and jam them upon his people, then he is a dictator.
"They can distribute more than they collect because much of the food they distribute is grown on church-owned farms worked by volunteers and packaged in church-owned factories worked by volunteers."
That's just an inefficient bonding ritual, rather like walk-a-thons. It would be far more efficient for them to go out working their normal jobs on overtime during the time they would have spent farming. Considering that Mormons are, statistically speaking, richer than the general population, the overtime pay could pay for the wages of 3 or 4 full-time agricultural workers.
These workers would not only be more efficient, but they would raise far more food.
But sorry, the Volunteers wouldn't feel as good about themselves.
I don't mean this sarcastically, but where do you meet such strong atheists? I have met plenty of agnostics, and a couple of people who are somewhat convinced that god does not exist, but never any of militant God-haters everyone seems to complain about.
Suppose you take your Finish friend around town, and are in a crowded subway with a hundred adults.
"Listen Karl, only 10 or so of these people can't read"
I'd be more concerned about studies that show the degree of literacy of the US population. To quote Wikipedia, "This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information.".
23% is not enough to win an election outright, but if if the educated electorate is split, they will be the king-makers.
Not to say that you wouldn't be justified, but we cannot allow individuals to start shooting soldiers/police officers every time they think their impending imprisonment is unjustified.
"And more generally, how many peasants' children in the developing world do you think really have any sort of chance of earning £200k pa as a consultant?"
Very few, mainly as a consequence of the extremely restrictive immigration policies of first world nations and occasionally shitty educational systems. The latter effect isn't as large as you'd think, the educational systems in the developing world are often very good.
"As for your anecdote, I'll counter it with mine: I work for a well-known top-flight management consultancy. My colleagues almost universally went to private school for an expensive education -- as did I. Wealth begets opportunity."
Certainly it does, I don't think we disagree. I think that equality of opportunity should be one of the goals of our society, for efficiency reasons if nothing else.
For the amount of money that we spend on Medicare, we could be providing private-school quality schooling to every child in this country.
But regardless, I fail to see how this justifies punitive damages against the rich.
"Another poster has dealt with the spectacular economic idiocy that is a flat or consumption tax. But perhaps you'd like to share how you think it's morally justifiable to take the same 15% of a person's earnings whether they're earning £20k a year or £200k. As you damn well know, someone on £20k can ill afford to lose £3k in tax, whereas someone on £200k will barely notice losing £30k. You just want to be richer, that's all, and you're gussying it up with other motives."
No, you can have a flat tax or consumption tax(I'd prefer the latter, perhaps supplemented by a low flat tax for enforcement reasons), while maintaining the current tax burden.
How? Just jack up the tax rate and mail checks to poor and middle class people, so that their overall tax system satisfies whatever level of progressiveness that you desire. The rich would pay about as much as they did before.
It's not the overall tax rate I'm worried about, but the marginal effects. Income taxes discourage investing and encourage consumption, and in the long-term, this has a significant effect on economic growth. Progressive taxes, more so then flat taxes, discourage the incentive to work, especially at for the middle class.
"That's the standard "conservative" Republican line from the monied class, but I don't buy it. You can't entice a rich man to invest his money; that's all he can do with it. He's going to invest it anyway."
Not really, rich people could buy a new home, or a new boat. I'd prefer if they lent it to VC firms.
"You can't entice a poor man to spend his; he has to. He lives from paycheck to paycheck."
There is an incredibly large percentage of the population that does not live paycheck to paycheck. When they have a choice between buying a big-screen tv, or investing, income taxes distort that decision against the investing.
"Trading "carbon credits" (Gore would love that one, what with his bigassed house) would only give some people an excuse to waste. Tax them progressively; e.g. if you use twice the energy I do, you pay 4x the tax and no trading allowed."
Doesn't this just create a needless incentive toward decentralization? I'd imagine that companies divide themselves into smaller pieces to avoid higher taxation. I don't really see the public good, from a deadweight loss point of view.
"Investing doesn't create wealth, and the rich do not create wealth. Wealth is created by labor alone; when the GM employee builds a Chevy, (or his part of one) he has created wealth. His employer set the stage for that wealth to be created, but labor builds the wealth."
That part of the economy has been dead for a while. Most new wealth in this country comes from sectors that are not labor intensive.
"All our insurance-centric method of paying for health care does is puts money in the pockets of insurance salesmen. It doesn't make a single person less sick, and prices many of them completely out of the health care market and out of the workforce."
I agree, but that's why I think people should just pay for their own health-care, with the government sending checks to cover part of the cost. catastrophic care can be dealt with from pre-approved instant loans from banks. It's not hard mathematically to show expected value will be higher than under an insurance model.
Yeah, that is certainly a concern, but in the long run, I think that the better standards of living from the increased saving and investment is better for the poor. And we can always counteract the regressionary effect with entitlement programs(like free education/college, earned income tax credit, ect.)
Ideally, we would tax negative externialities(such as pollution and traffic) to fund positive ones(Education and research). I read an estimate that carbon auctioning would raise 400 billion a year, and I'd imagine road pricing could generate even more.
If we eliminated wasteful spending programs(I see no credible rational for government health care spending outside of insurance company regulation and epidemic fighting), it's entirely feasible that we could fund most of the federal government from such fees.
"Besides, the standard operational definition of a monopoly is that a company can raise prices without losing sales, because consumers don't have credible alternatives."
No it's not. The definition of a monopoly is a firm that, by changing it's supply output, can greatly effect the market price of a good. Considering that the 99c price was set by Apple, that seems to be the case.
"So far, Apple's behavior with regard to pricing is to fight against price increases."
That sounds more like limit pricing to me, still illegal.
"The rich, for the most part, are rich because their parents were rich."
Please give me evidence to support that, because it conflicts with what I have seen personally. My mother was born to a homeless father in a rural village in Morocco, and now she is a very successful doctor who pays the maximum marginal tax rate.
I live in a "rich" neighborhood, where the median income is around 200k per year. Of my neighbors, nearly all of them were born to poor or middle class parents. They are rich because they are, for the most part, Doctors, Lawyers, and Consultants.
"Their parents bought them their valuable skills. Some people may be poor because they're dumb, but most suffer simply because their parents did as well."
I agree, education is a positive externality. but providing private-school quality education to all students, rich or poor, would not be particularly expensive. Why do we need progressive taxation for such a thing?
Why can't we raise revenue for such a thing by a flat income tax, or better, a consumption tax?
"It's not stealing. If they don't like the terms of the contract, they can leave the country and go somewhere else."
Who has the right to set the social contract? Democracy? By that logic, you would tell a black person suffering under Jum Crow laws in the 20's that if he doesn't like the terms, he should just leave.
Unlike the Pre-Reagan years, there are plenty of first world nations with very low taxes. Even France and the UK have lower top marginal tax rates then the US. There is a good chance that rich will leave.
If they do that, how are either side better off? We lose both tax revenue and GDP, and they live in a country that was not their first choice.
"Rich people get rich because they take the lion's share of excess value from transactions. Sure everyone gains from a transaction, but the rich use their money as leverage to ensure they get a larger percent."
Consumer surplus arguments are only relevant in monopolies. Otherwise, price tends to marginal cost, irrespective of how much a consumer would pay for it. "The power of money" has very little to do with it. There might be some cases of anti-trust, but I'd prefer to pursue them, instead of legitimizing it through progressive taxation.
The rich, for the most part, are rich because they possess more valuable skills than people who are not rich. This is why profession is so closely correlated with income.
"but then somebody sets up an organized crime unit, in which they only get caught 10% of the time, and only the lower members of the crime unit get caught, then the big kingpin has found an easy way to make money."
"AFAIK the efficiency of most urban roads seems to collapse around commute time. A simple solution would be to add an ultralight monorail system. Unlike Buses and cars, nobody would be forced to fear death going to and from work, and it would scale very well with a "packet frequency" rather than a "packet size" approach."
How is the construction of an expensive multi-billion dollar system "simple"?
Instead, let's charge for roads, and raise the price until supply=demand.
"Do you know that in socialist countries where people pay 50% or more of their income in taxes, the majority are happy to do so, because they feel they are getting fair value for their money?"
The reason why the majority of people in the tax-heavy parts of Europe are happy to pay their taxes is simple. The vast majority of the population of Europe pay tax rates roughly equal to Americans(Even Sweden has an average rate of ~37%), they receive far more benefits then they pay in taxes. Talk to anyone with money in Europe, and they are desperately trying to flee the country.
I spent a little bit of time in an elite high school in Paris. Nearly all of the students wanted to go to either Ireland, America, or England, citing much lower taxes and better job markets.
These countries know this, and that's why they are franticly lowering taxes.
And please answer this: What do you think gives you the right to steal huge amounts of money from rich people? And don't mention crimes or corruption or fraud. If we have the political capital to implement progressive taxation, we can punish crimes, corruption, or fraud instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious, do you support the death penalty against murderers?
Or, the US would be relatively more religious than Switzerland, which is about as close to direct democracy as is humanly possible.
In Afghanistan, they will kill you if you convert to Christianity, or "insult" the Prophet. It's a bit of a difference from "In God We Trust".
The grandparent used the existence of the farm as proof of the charity's efficiency, as opposed to the recruitment gimmick that it actually is. I'm pointing out that it is not efficient, and that if helping people is their main priority, then they should go in another direction.
"If it is okay for people to sit on their ass and play X-Box, why is it wrong for a bunch of like-minded people to get together and help others out in their spare time. God forbid people have fun or feel good while helping others..."
If these people think that their cause is so important, then they should realize that people die because of their insistence on having fun. Having participated in a lot of these things myself(My school forced me to, now I resort to strict donations), it seems to me that most people look at this thing as an opportunity to have fun with friends, and gain some respect or community service hours from their community for "helping out". From my experience, most of them couldn't care less what is actually done with the money.
I guess it's fine that we managed to co-opt this narcissism toward charity, but it's not a personal virtue.
"Life is not about efficiency."
With all due respect, tell that to the people who starved to death because the LDS volunteers needed to "have fun" to contribute.
If they are able to do farm work and warehouse stocking, they are physically qualified for more productive jobs. Farm workers, especially in third world countries(Don't bring up transport costs, they are essentially zero), make extremely low wages. If these marginally productive volunteers spent the time as a part-time temp at Walmart, or washing cars, they would be able to produce more food then if they did the farm work themselves.
"You're also assuming that choosing to donate or volunteer is an either/or proposition, i.e. that those who choose to volunteer do not donate, and vice-versa."
No, I'm not. I'm arguing that they should put all of their effort into donation, and that the volunteering is nothing more than an inefficient gimmick.
"I apologize, but the "Flamebait" tag may be justified, as your post seems more eager to criticize than to find out the underlying causes of things."
What does that even mean? Someone is trumpeting an inefficient farming method as proof of the LDS's efficiency, and I am reminding him that it is not efficient at all, and then providing several alternative methods his church could use to help the poor more.
How exactly is that flamebait?
Agricultural workers are extremely cheap. If the guy did a part time stint at Walmart or washed cars, he would be far more productive.
"Emotionally and spiritually, it's a lot different to take a few hours and get your hands dirty rather than just writing a slightly larger check."
Yes, it is. But he/she helps the world more by cutting a larger check. It's a personal fault on their part that they preferred the illusion of making a difference at the expense of the cause they are trying to promote.
But I realize that charitable giving has some deranged incentives behind it, and that we need to stoke people's ego's to make them give money. But it bothered me when the grandparent trumpeted this farm, not as a marketing gimmick, but as an efficiency measure.
Who designs ballots? Who is in charge of voter registration? These are difficult questions that are difficult to answer immediately, but where society has found effective solutions. Usually we deal with it by allowing opposite parties to contest the wording of questions ahead of time, and the judiciary sorts it out pretty quickly.
I'd imagine that we wouldn't actually use current polling methods, which are severely restricted by privacy law. This is because it is extremely difficult to avoid sampling error by picking truly random samples of the population. Instead, we call "random" numbers, with a high level of non-response levels. Mathematically, this creates problems.
Governments are not saddled with such restrictions. The government already has an enormous list of federally eligible voters(social security database), they can just pick about 10,000 random qualifying social security numbers, make compliance mandatory, and send a team of qualified agents to use the full resources of the NSA and FBI to track them down to ask them questions.
Repeat a couple of times with different teams(carefully vetted by multiple political parties) to make sure nothing weird happens, and you'll have an extremely reliable picture of what the public wants(Much more so then conventional elections), for a fraction of the cost.
"2)Do we really want people who are too lazy to get off the couch every 2 years and vote to have that much of a say in government?"
Considering that the government takes their money, and imprisons them whoever they disobey the government's rules, yes. If you don't want to share a government with them, move, or pay them to move.
"3) How are we to know if the people polled are of eligible voting age? Or that they are even permitted by law to vote (they could be convicted felons, incompetent, etc.)? Or even citizens of the U.S.?"
That information is available to the Federal government. Any fraud could be detected by the teams of investigators.
"4) How much public policy do we want to actually entrust in the hands of a highly opinionated but entirely ignorant populace? Should foreign affairs with Burkina Faso be a subject of polling? Or how about complex economic matters? Again, who decides on what issues we poll on? Does the public's knowledge - or complete lack thereof - play a role in what we ask? How do we determine public knowledge?"
Just ask "Do you believe that we should devolve diplomatic and economic decisions to separate specialized departments of experts, subject to over-ride by referendum and congress?". At that point, let congress write laws, but give the judiciary the right to repeal laws that go against polling results, just as they do for unconstitutional laws.
As for your issues question, how do we pick ballot initiatives in states? Normally we stipulate that any question that is backed by a petition with X voters is put on the ballot. I'd imagine something similar would work for polling.
"5) As to questions of "war and peace", do keep in mind that public opinion polls tend to support war at the moment - and it's not all because the evil corporations you demonize so much are responsible for it, either."
Not really, I doubt that more than 20% of the population would support an invasion of Mexico. The last German Prime minister actually ran a campaign that he didn't invade Iraq. You could either place constitutional limits on war, or require large super-majorities for war.
"6) Countries need to depend on each other in the long-run: how will this work if a country is commanded at its core by a very, very fickle public?"
The public is very fickle. If you look at our approval ratings of foreign country, they are extremely stable. This would be a problem.
So the leader actively resisting the collective will of the people is a good thing? A president is not a great leader to be fearlessly followed, he is a manager of a enormous organisation that collects money from the people... to serve the needs of those people.
Don't think the people know what they want? Don't take their money, and don't throw them in prison whenever they violate your rules.
Just because managerial restraints kept the people from being in control in the past, does not justify that now.
I want my president to follow polls to the letter. If he begins to inject his own "convictions", and jam them upon his people, then he is a dictator.
That's just an inefficient bonding ritual, rather like walk-a-thons. It would be far more efficient for them to go out working their normal jobs on overtime during the time they would have spent farming. Considering that Mormons are, statistically speaking, richer than the general population, the overtime pay could pay for the wages of 3 or 4 full-time agricultural workers.
These workers would not only be more efficient, but they would raise far more food.
But sorry, the Volunteers wouldn't feel as good about themselves.
Where are you meeting these people?
"Listen Karl, only 10 or so of these people can't read"
I'd be more concerned about studies that show the degree of literacy of the US population. To quote Wikipedia, "This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information.".
23% is not enough to win an election outright, but if if the educated electorate is split, they will be the king-makers.
Not to say that you wouldn't be justified, but we cannot allow individuals to start shooting soldiers/police officers every time they think their impending imprisonment is unjustified.
Very few, mainly as a consequence of the extremely restrictive immigration policies of first world nations and occasionally shitty educational systems. The latter effect isn't as large as you'd think, the educational systems in the developing world are often very good.
"As for your anecdote, I'll counter it with mine: I work for a well-known top-flight management consultancy. My colleagues almost universally went to private school for an expensive education -- as did I. Wealth begets opportunity."
Certainly it does, I don't think we disagree. I think that equality of opportunity should be one of the goals of our society, for efficiency reasons if nothing else.
For the amount of money that we spend on Medicare, we could be providing private-school quality schooling to every child in this country.
But regardless, I fail to see how this justifies punitive damages against the rich.
"Another poster has dealt with the spectacular economic idiocy that is a flat or consumption tax. But perhaps you'd like to share how you think it's morally justifiable to take the same 15% of a person's earnings whether they're earning £20k a year or £200k. As you damn well know, someone on £20k can ill afford to lose £3k in tax, whereas someone on £200k will barely notice losing £30k. You just want to be richer, that's all, and you're gussying it up with other motives."
No, you can have a flat tax or consumption tax(I'd prefer the latter, perhaps supplemented by a low flat tax for enforcement reasons), while maintaining the current tax burden.
How? Just jack up the tax rate and mail checks to poor and middle class people, so that their overall tax system satisfies whatever level of progressiveness that you desire. The rich would pay about as much as they did before.
It's not the overall tax rate I'm worried about, but the marginal effects. Income taxes discourage investing and encourage consumption, and in the long-term, this has a significant effect on economic growth. Progressive taxes, more so then flat taxes, discourage the incentive to work, especially at for the middle class.
Not really, rich people could buy a new home, or a new boat. I'd prefer if they lent it to VC firms.
"You can't entice a poor man to spend his; he has to. He lives from paycheck to paycheck."
There is an incredibly large percentage of the population that does not live paycheck to paycheck. When they have a choice between buying a big-screen tv, or investing, income taxes distort that decision against the investing.
"Trading "carbon credits" (Gore would love that one, what with his bigassed house) would only give some people an excuse to waste. Tax them progressively; e.g. if you use twice the energy I do, you pay 4x the tax and no trading allowed."
Doesn't this just create a needless incentive toward decentralization? I'd imagine that companies divide themselves into smaller pieces to avoid higher taxation. I don't really see the public good, from a deadweight loss point of view.
"Investing doesn't create wealth, and the rich do not create wealth. Wealth is created by labor alone; when the GM employee builds a Chevy, (or his part of one) he has created wealth. His employer set the stage for that wealth to be created, but labor builds the wealth."
That part of the economy has been dead for a while. Most new wealth in this country comes from sectors that are not labor intensive.
"All our insurance-centric method of paying for health care does is puts money in the pockets of insurance salesmen. It doesn't make a single person less sick, and prices many of them completely out of the health care market and out of the workforce."
I agree, but that's why I think people should just pay for their own health-care, with the government sending checks to cover part of the cost. catastrophic care can be dealt with from pre-approved instant loans from banks. It's not hard mathematically to show expected value will be higher than under an insurance model.
Ideally, we would tax negative externialities(such as pollution and traffic) to fund positive ones(Education and research). I read an estimate that carbon auctioning would raise 400 billion a year, and I'd imagine road pricing could generate even more.
If we eliminated wasteful spending programs(I see no credible rational for government health care spending outside of insurance company regulation and epidemic fighting), it's entirely feasible that we could fund most of the federal government from such fees.
No it's not. The definition of a monopoly is a firm that, by changing it's supply output, can greatly effect the market price of a good. Considering that the 99c price was set by Apple, that seems to be the case.
"So far, Apple's behavior with regard to pricing is to fight against price increases."
That sounds more like limit pricing to me, still illegal.
You mean GPS congestion pricing? Yes. Germany does it with trucks. It's rather easy.
Please give me evidence to support that, because it conflicts with what I have seen personally. My mother was born to a homeless father in a rural village in Morocco, and now she is a very successful doctor who pays the maximum marginal tax rate.
I live in a "rich" neighborhood, where the median income is around 200k per year. Of my neighbors, nearly all of them were born to poor or middle class parents. They are rich because they are, for the most part, Doctors, Lawyers, and Consultants.
"Their parents bought them their valuable skills. Some people may be poor because they're dumb, but most suffer simply because their parents did as well."
I agree, education is a positive externality. but providing private-school quality education to all students, rich or poor, would not be particularly expensive. Why do we need progressive taxation for such a thing?
Why can't we raise revenue for such a thing by a flat income tax, or better, a consumption tax?
Who has the right to set the social contract? Democracy? By that logic, you would tell a black person suffering under Jum Crow laws in the 20's that if he doesn't like the terms, he should just leave.
Unlike the Pre-Reagan years, there are plenty of first world nations with very low taxes. Even France and the UK have lower top marginal tax rates then the US. There is a good chance that rich will leave.
If they do that, how are either side better off? We lose both tax revenue and GDP, and they live in a country that was not their first choice.
"Rich people get rich because they take the lion's share of excess value from transactions. Sure everyone gains from a transaction, but the rich use their money as leverage to ensure they get a larger percent."
Consumer surplus arguments are only relevant in monopolies. Otherwise, price tends to marginal cost, irrespective of how much a consumer would pay for it. "The power of money" has very little to do with it. There might be some cases of anti-trust, but I'd prefer to pursue them, instead of legitimizing it through progressive taxation.
The rich, for the most part, are rich because they possess more valuable skills than people who are not rich. This is why profession is so closely correlated with income.
So how exactly would you set fines?
Honestly, try to change your commute time. You impose a cost on society when you use roads, and you should pay it.
Why? Why shouldn't roads be financed solely by those who use them?
How is the construction of an expensive multi-billion dollar system "simple"?
Instead, let's charge for roads, and raise the price until supply=demand.
Food prices change every day/month too. What's your point?
The reason why the majority of people in the tax-heavy parts of Europe are happy to pay their taxes is simple. The vast majority of the population of Europe pay tax rates roughly equal to Americans(Even Sweden has an average rate of ~37%), they receive far more benefits then they pay in taxes. Talk to anyone with money in Europe, and they are desperately trying to flee the country.
I spent a little bit of time in an elite high school in Paris. Nearly all of the students wanted to go to either Ireland, America, or England, citing much lower taxes and better job markets.
These countries know this, and that's why they are franticly lowering taxes.
And please answer this: What do you think gives you the right to steal huge amounts of money from rich people? And don't mention crimes or corruption or fraud. If we have the political capital to implement progressive taxation, we can punish crimes, corruption, or fraud instead.