The Tax On Low Taxes

Military History \| How To Make War \| Wars Around the World	Rules of Use	How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Who's Winning Discussion Board
Return to Topic Page

Subject: The Tax On Low Taxes
SYSOP 1/1/2013 7:46:39 AM

Quote Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: PREV 1 2 3 NEXT

PaulG 1/2/2013 5:19:02 PM

Dear Mr. Tucci,

If your comments were not pertinent to the article in question, why post them in that article's comments section? Why not find a more appropriate place?

Turns out, Bob Slayton has a nice piece on this subject, just out, on Huffpost:

"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-slayton/taxes-and-prosperity_b_2388830.html"

Since I'm sure that link will be messed up somehow, you can find it by googling "bob slayton taxes and prosperity".

There's even a comments section there so you can inform and enlighten his readers as well as SP's.

Keynesian Paul

Quote Reply

PaulG 1/2/2013 5:27:27 PM

Further to Mr. Tucci,

Government is fundamentally evil, no matter that it might in some remote way be excused as an allegedly "necessary" evil, and evil people always batten upon government. It is as natural as buzzards seeking carrion, and killing small children whenever they can get away with it.

Can you point to any society, current or previously existing, to which you think we should aspire, which had at its core no govt? Or a govt you think is appropriate and desirable?

Thank you for your gracious, thoughtful and enlightening response.

Paul

Quote Reply

Tucci78 ''...that which governs least....'' 1/2/2013 8:33:27 PM

PaulG asks of me: "Can you point to any society, current or previously existing, to which you think we should aspire, which had at its core no govt? Or a govt you think is appropriate and desirable?"

Sure. The Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica), with direct democracy such that the governments of commune, canton, and confederation can't do more than spend petty cash without putting the expenditure (and any taxes) before the voting public in frequent referenda commonly scheduled on Sundays for maximum participatory convenience. Among the world's highest rates of private firearms ownership, commensurately low rates of firearms-related violent crime, a military consisting 95% of militia (all of whom are armed with selective-fire military small arms which they are required to maintain in their homes in addition to their privately-owned small arms, most of military quality) with a strict policy of neutrality and nonaggression in all foreign relations, one of the hardest currencies on the planet, far better privacy rights protections than in these United States despite recent degradations....

In short, the sort of government you really might be able to drag upstairs and drown in the bathtub, kept by the citizenry weak and therefore more appropriately within it's proper role in a civil society under the rule of law than we've managed to retain in our Republic.

Americans ought to be able to do even better, I should think. We did once, merely by enforcing the provisions of the Constitution rather than allowing our politicians to evade them.

=============

"The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not. Throughout history, governments have used violence, intimidation, coercion, and mass murder to enforce this system. But governments' first line of 'defense' is always a blizzard of lies — about its own alleged benevolence, altruism, heroism, and greatness, along with equally big lies about the 'evils' of the civil society, especially the free market.

"The current economic crisis, which was instigated by the government's central bank and its boom-and-bust monetary policies, among other interventions, has once again been blamed on 'too little regulation' and too much freedom.

"Will Americans ever catch on to this biggest of all of government's Big Lies?"

-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "Never-Ending Government Lies About Markets" (13 May 2009) [Emphasis added]

Quote Reply

Tucci78 Pertinence and diagnosis 1/2/2013 8:52:32 PM

Plugging away, PaulG demonstrates his fatal failure in problem-solving with noise to me as follows: "If your comments were not pertinent to the article in question, why post them in that article's comments section? Why not find a more appropriate place?"

Because, of course, this is a perfectly appropriate place. There is in the initiating article here a short-sighted misapprehension about the root cause of Pakistan's ills, both as a society and as a political entity, with the originating author blindly supposing that by increasing the amount by which the egregiously corrupt, wasteful, and in other ways destructive government (presently a so-called "democracy" instead of a military dictatorship) gouges the already crippled and strangling productive sector of their national economy.

The problem isn't that the band of brigands in Islamabad aren't getting enough "squeeze" from their victims but that they're wreaking havoc with the division of labor economy in which the Pakistani people - many of them folks with good educations, much commercial initiative, and considerable energy, as expatriate Pakistanis keep proving in countries other than Pakistan - are trying to engage.

In order to understand the nature of war, it's necessary to gain some appreciation of the causes of war. That and a reasonable appreciation of the pertinence of technology and the sine qua non of logistics leads the thoughtful student of human conflict to a consideration of political economics.

And only flaming idiots want to embrace bad economics, economic theory that doesn't accord with objective reality and therefore leads the adherent into conclusions and contentions which simply don't frelkin' work. Like Keynesianism.

You won't get better government in Pakistan by enabling the "democratically elected" goons to rip off the vulnerable, even were it possible to throw some of the "fat cats" into that category. Bear in mind the homely old adage that Politicians are like rats; what they take for themselves is nothing compared with the damage they do in getting it.

It's a homely old adage because it's true. And even PaulG knows it.

Quote Reply

PaulG 1/3/2013 3:26:48 AM

Dear Mr. Tucci,

Wow! Switzerland!

According to the CIA Factbook, Switzerland's tax revenue is 34.9% of its GDP, vs. 22% for the USA.

Yet the US's unemployment rate is 3x that of Switzerland (9% vs. 2.8%) and its poverty rate is more than 2x higher (15.1% vs. 6.9%).

"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html"

"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sz.html"

Why do you suppose all the tax revenue sucked away from the private sphere isn't hurting their economy? Maybe the author of the Strategy Page article was onto something, no?

Paulie

Quote Reply

PaulG 1/3/2013 3:30:00 AM

BTW, Switzerland has Obamacare.

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland"

Paulie

Quote Reply

Tucci78 ''What is seen...'' (1 of 2) 1/3/2013 7:41:31 AM

"...and what is not seen."

The persistent sucker-for-propaganda (and for bad economics) PaulGseagulls from the CIA Factbook: "Switzerland's tax revenue is 34.9% of its GDP, vs. 22% for the USA" to reveal that he's also ignorant of the homilies published by good economist Frédéric Bastiat more than a century and a half ago. F'rinstance, we can be pretty sure he's never read that:

"In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account only of the visible effect; the other takes account of both the effects which are seen and those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil."

I'd really like to see PaulG in the hands of an even moderately competent free-range con artist. The institutional "long con" Keynesians certainly have him gulled out of his socks.

More than half a century ago, an anonymous U.N. official observed that "Inflation is the one form of taxation that even the weakest government can impose upon its people." (Milton Friedman phrased it as "Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation," but it works either way.) Now, all governments are parasitic upon the wealth-producing private (i.e., productive) sector of the societies they "serve." To the extent that they fulfill what StrategyPage readers know as the "breaking things and killing people" functions, they serve an arguably necessary role, maintaining a credible threat of retaliatory deadly force to discourage domestic and foreign aggressors from violating the lives, the liberties, and the property rights of peaceable persons within those governments' jurisdictions, but they don't do anything positive in the aggregate improvement of their prey species' quality of life. That's only accomplished by voluntary exchange in the marketplace enabling the manifestation of productive enterprise in the satisfaction of consumers' demands.

And when you get down to it, all human beings are consumers. Some of us are honest, decent people. Some of us are government thugs. Lots of us perforce tread uneasily in both realms, as the "mixed economy" degrades social comity and good civil order.

Let's clarify for PaulG the ways that governments rip off the productive sector of each society upon which they prey:

(1) They steal it at gunpoint. This is called "taxation," and manifests (among other ways) as duties, imposts, fees, tariffs, and unapportioned direct taxes upon individuals' personal revenues, the utterly and unarguably unconstitutional federal tax on wages, salaries, salesmen's commissions, and even waitresses' tips which is falsely termed "income" tax.

(2) They borrow it. This is called "sovereign debt," which was pretty much the whole reason why Alexander Hamilton and his bankster buddies conjured up the Constitutional Convention to "revise" the Articles of Confederation. No wonder Patrick Henry's response to the proposition was "I smell a rat." But - of course! - "we owe it to ourselves," so that's just peachy-keen.

(3) They counterfeit it. This is theft of value by fraud, and is currently being perpetrated under the expression "quantitative easing." An old-fashioned and much better term is debauching the currency.

- Continued -

Quote Reply

Tucci78 ''What is seen...'' (1.5 of 2) 1/3/2013 8:03:19 AM

- Concluded -

Inflation is not increases in dollar-denominated prices. That's an inevitable effect of currency inflation which can be deferred in the mixed economy by way of government mechanisms devised and operated to derange the signaling mechanisms provided by voluntary exchange in a market free of dirigisme.

Of the three government routes to rip-off, counterfeiting (currency inflation) is the most invidious, the damaging effects thereof difficult at best for the average person to perceive, and easy for the credulous schmuck to blot from conscious perception by sticking his fingers in his ears and chanting "Nurmee-nurmee-nurmee-I-can't-hear-you!" over and over, the way PaulG is doing. For amplification, good economist Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money? (1964, 1980) is available freely and in full online via the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Extortion perpetrated directly as open "squeeze" upon the private citizen's property - taxation - is politically unpopular and therefore difficult. The government thug must make a convincing case for it. In a direct democracy (like Switzerland's) this means getting the consent of the constituency in referenda. Sometimes there's agreement and approval. Sometimes not. Either way, it's not easy to diddle the people of the Swiss cantons.

Now, in these United States, methods have been devised in the operation of our representative republic to sidestep such control mechanisms. We are not a direct democracy. Nonetheless, direct extortion (taxation painfully perceived by the victims) is not popular, and the popularity contest participants don't like making themselves unpopular with the voters. How to get spending power without getting the little people angry at you?

Well, there's borrowing and sloughing responsibility on your successors. But to keep on borrowing, sovereign debt must be serviced, and compound interest has a habit of compounding. As the "sovereign" becomes more and more obviously a bad repayment prospect, the cost of borrowed - manifest in interest rates demanded - will have to go up.

Here's where currency counterfeiting comes in. Through the issue of fiat "money" (which the government thugs can force upon the populace by way of legal tender laws which oblige valuable goods and services to be exchanged for Federal Reserve Notes when the U.S. Treasury cuts checks to pay for stuff), the purchase of U.S. government notes of indebtedness by the banks of the Federal Reserve System can be conducted freely.

The Fed simply conjures "dollars" out of thin air, receiving those I.O.U.s as assets to hold as backing for the F.R.N.s handed over to the politicians to spend.

An ever-expanding mountain of government debt monetized as the currency upon which the productive sector of society must rely as its medium of exchange, bloating blob standard of value for the calculation of prices, and (whoopee!) ever-degrading store of value over time.

- Continued -

Quote Reply

Tucci78 ''What is seen...'' (2 of 2) 1/3/2013 8:05:56 AM

- Concluded -

I'll betcha PaulG is one of those folks who decry the irresponsible average American's failure to save enough of his "income," refusing to acknowledge the perversity of "quantitative easing" both depressing interest rates on loans (for the benefit of the debtor government) and the future purchasing power of F.R.N.s deposited in bank accounts.

The reason why the Swiss citizenry can and do tolerate a higher rate of direct taxation ("34.9% of its GDP, vs. 22% for the USA") is that their currency is nowhere near as subject to "official" counterfeiting as is the U.S. Federal Reserve Note. They can see what and how their governments spend at every level. By contrast, its deliberately made extremely difficult for the average American - meaning most of the voters - to perceive the far higher rates of predation upon their substance perpetrated by our "public servants."

Do I agree with all the things that the Swiss have the governments of their communes, cantons, and confederacy doing? Not at all. These United States are not the cantons of the Swiss Confederacy. We have different strengths, needs, and culture (to name just a few categories of characteristics). We have advantages we can exploit that the Swiss have never had, and never will have.

But much of what the Swiss have done with what they do have anybody can undertake.

Starting with a currency that isn't a tissue of lies and therefore a mechanism for pillage.

- 30 -

Quote Reply

Skylark 1/3/2013 12:28:12 PM

BTW, Switzerland has Obamacare.

Switzerland (BTW) is also probably one of the hardest countries for illegal immigrants to sneak across the border and overload their health-care system, with a much higher likelihood of deportation if they are caught, so what?

Quote Reply

PREV 1 2 3 NEXT